Dem convention, night four: Lock! Her! Up!

AllahpunditPosted at 7:01 pm on July 28, 2016

Considering what the polls look like this week, I bet a lot of Democrats wish the DOJ had locked her up awhile back, clearing the way for Uncle Joe. Ah well. There’s still time for her to save her party tonight by graciously standing aside and letting them nominate him instead. America first!

Expectations are so low for this speech, especially on the heels of Obama’s barnburner yesterday, that she almost can’t fail to overperform — yet she’ll fail anyway. That’s Hillary the politician in a nutshell. She won’t be notably bad, she certainly won’t be great, she’ll just be … there. She’s the mediocre sitcom from your youth that you’re forever stumbling across while channel surfing. Sometimes you leave it on, not because it’s good but because it’s familiar. Do Americans in the mood for radical change want to watch reruns for four years, if only because what’s on the other channel is simply too whacked-out? We’ll known soon.

Like Trump, she’ll be introduced by her daughter in order to “humanize” her. I think that’s a minor mistake, and not just because it’s folly to think you’re going to get someone to see Hillary as human after 25 years if they don’t see her that way already. What she needs is enhancement of her authority. Some voters will have trouble seeing her as commander-in-chief simply because she’s a woman. Having a powerful defense figure like, say, Bob Gates or Admiral Stavridis to signal that he respects her — and trusts her, notwithstanding her e-mail fiasco — by introducing her would help. Rolling Chelsea out for the maternal feelz doesn’t do anything for anyone who wasn’t inclined to vote for Hillary already.

Here’s your Twitter widget for real-time commentary tonight. Trump is urging his supporters not to watch, ostensibly because he doesn’t want you exposed to lies, lies, lies but in reality because he can’t bear the thought of a dial tone like Hillary getting better ratings for her speech than he got for his. I’m going to quadruple down on my prediction: No convention bounce for HRC. And if I’m wrong and there is one, it’ll be modest and fleeting. You already know all the punchlines in this rerun, remember? Or almost all of them. Some lefty group is reportedly planning to make an, ahem, citizen’s arrest of Hillary tonight. Stay tuned.